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For weeks in early winter I told my family that there were rats in the garage, the room closest to my room. For months they told me I was imagining hearing or seeing them. I don’t know why they did it, it would’ve been simple enough to either believe me or check for themselves. When I got a photo of one in the garage in spring, it was apparently a “fluke”, and I still got ignored. A rat died in the vents at the start of summer and it took weeks to drag one of them in my room to see how badly it smelled. It was so nauseous that I would walk in and almost throw up. They put an air freshener in the room to see if that would overpower the smell and I’d stop complaining. I eventually moved myself to the couch and stayed there for a while. They thought it too shameful to show guests that they weren’t taking care of it, so whenever people would come over, I’d move my blanket and pillow somewhere else so the wouldn’t know I was sleeping on the couch. Finally, the smell moved to the rest of the house. Only then was anything done. By the time the smell dissipated, I’d been out of my room for my months. All of summer and some of fall. But my general anger and sadness thinking about my family was never about the rat in the vents. In fact, I didn’t even acknowledge that this situation wasn’t right until maybe half an hour ago, it just didn’t occur to me. The rat was just a symptom of the things at play within my family dynamic. I don’t know why no one wanted to believe me, listen to me, or take care of me. I still feel the hole today that was left by not feeling loved or liked.
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I know the rat situation is a metaphor for a deeper problem, but I wanted to start by saying (this may also be a metaphor) that I'm in a similar situation and I learned to make friends with the rat. I set up a security cam and some food scraps and got video of the rat... cute as hell... and apparently my only friend. (See the metaphor) Anyway, I'm really sorry for what you/we are going through and no words can make it better if you have negligent or outright abusive parents. Having a rat friend does help though. If that's all you can get.
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